Pu-erh Tea

Tea Adventures: Ripe Pu-erh

About three weeks ago, I bought a lovely little gaiwan, or lidded cup, in the interests of furthering my tea appreciation. I adore oolong teas and I want to learn more about the traditional Chinese gongfucha tea ceremony and, generally, the style of brewing that focuses on multiple short infusions of the tea to get a lot of brewings out of a small amount of leaves. It's practical!

The gaiwan is totally adorable, and a much better learning tool than say, immediately jumping into a yixing clay teapot, because those things can be a serious investment (they were the best part of that crappy second episode of series 1 of Sherlock, IMO). The gaiwan is also way useful, since it's nice glazed porcelain it's not going to absorb the aroma and flavors of tea like unglazed yixing ware, meaning that I can try out a lot of different kinds of tea in the gaiwan and not be locked into just, say, tieguanyin. Granted if I had an yixing teapot I'd be drinking tieguanyin all the damn time, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. My first try with the gaiwan was with some gunpowder green that I have had sitting around for a year, I'm not gonna lie, because it's rolled so tight the tea keeps very well, and I've made a dent in this giant pound bag but man. 

It worked nicely, but I didn't get any pictures of the process. This afternoon,however, I decided to be bold and try a type of tea I've never brewed before: pu-erh. With the gaiwan came two little samples of pu-erh, one "raw" traditionally-processed bunch from 2008, and one "ripe" or artificially fermented (and therefore cheaper, more consistent, and easier to brew) sample from 2006. I went with the ripe sample, and I still have about half of it left over for another go, but I'm totally not done with the first brewing yet.

And now, photographic evidence of my adventures in being brave and a grownup and trying new things:

My gear all set up. Yes I am using a shot glass as a drinking vessel because I don't have nice small teacups.

Bone Soup!

Like Stone Soup, only with more carnage.
Girlfriend's mum did a chicken in the slow-cooker a month or so ago, and since she doesn't eat soup, I asked if I could have the remains of the bird with which to make DELICIOUS STOCK.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, everyone. Does it feel like we're living in the future yet? do you still want your damn jetpack? Me too, friends, me too. But come next year I'll be laughing my ass off at the people who've misinterpreted the Mayan calendar and think that the world is going to end. I'll have to make a special "ha don't you feel silly" pie for the occasion. What do you think says that? Key Lime?

ANYWAY. If you, like I, slept in a whole heck of a lot today and feel like you've missed most of New Year's Day, you may feel a little groggy upon waking. And so I present one of my new favorite recipes, fresh from my own brain. It is delicious, filling, and requires just enough steps to sort of wake you up and ease you into conscious activity without being life threatening. I think.
Also good, probably, if you've got a hangover! So here's the World's Greatest Fried Egg Sandwich:

1) Decide you want eggs.
2) Open the fridge to see that there is only one egg, and opt for a Fried Egg Sandwich. But it will be so delicious you will not miss that other egg, if you normally eat two for a serving.
3) Melt some Delicious Bacon Fat in Baby Skillet. While you are doing this, warm the egg up by letting it take a bath in a bowl of warm water.
4) Check to see what kind of bread you have. Hmm, that last kaiser roll is looking dry, better use that up.
5) If the kaiser roll is incredibly dry and would stick to your mouth like cotton balls, slice it in half and put it in the toaster. TOAST THAT THING.
6) Crack the egg into the skillet, get a piece of shell in the skillet, grumble to yourself in disgust and fish it out with one of the larger bits of eggshell.
7) Cover skillet with a well-fitting lid!
8) If the kaiser roll is toasted, get it out of the toaster and only burn your fingers a little bit, and then slather both sides with miracle whip (or, if you're a better foodie than I am, your own homemade mayonnaise). Slather it. I'm not kidding.
9) Get some baby spinach out of the crisper drawer. Ooh, that's not going to be good for much longer.
10) Check the egg, and if the whites are all set nicely, flip it over. My egg today was rather old, so I did not have it as runny as I normally like. This was over hard. like Dale Cooper hard.
11) When the egg is done, put it on the bottom portion of the roll. put the skillet back on the burner.
12) Toss the spinach into the skillet with the delicious bacon fat, turn it over a few times with your spatula to make sure it's got a good coating of fat, and cover it for about a minute. While this is happening, slice some fresh mozzarella that is not so fresh anymore and has gotten a little too tangy for Girlfriend's taste but you still think it's delicious, dammit, and slap those pieces on top of the egg.
13) Check the spinach, stir it around a bit, flip it, sprinkle some salt on it, and cover it back up.
14) Do some dishes while you wait another minute. Or get some juice.
15) Turn the heat off, uncover the spinach, give it one last stir just to check that all the leaves are gorgeous and shiny dark green and wilted but not SO mushy that they're falling apart. They should be just nice and clumpy. No falling apart spinach. If it looks absolutely wonderful (which it will), spatula it onto the cheese-covered egg, and top with the other half of the kaiser roll.
16) Eat sandwich, exclaiming loudly and passionately how awesome it is, to anyone who is around. Even if you're alone in the house.

Don't you feel better now? I know I do. and I am ready to face the day! Er...afternoon. or evening. whatever. I have more knitting to do.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Awesome!

Today I woke up at ass-o'clock in the morning (read: before sunrise) and made pancakes. These were the most perfect pancakes I have ever seen in my life. I'm still kind of in shock that they turned out so beautiful and tasty.

I've made pancakes before, of course, but there's always problems with them: the first ones are too pale, then they get too dark or I don't watch them carefully and they get too dry, or if I make them too large, they crack down the middle when I flip them. Also, they are unevenly shaped, and not obedient when stacked.

These pancakes are different. The most notable difference is they are from SCRATCH. And that's a beautiful thing. I used this recipe and true to form, it produced good old-fashioned pancakes. These are the pancakes m grandmothers would have made. Well, one grandma, anyway, but she died before I was born. The grandma I grew up around was (and is) very much enamored of the Modern, and she probably would have used bisquick for pancakes because it was new and shiny and convenient. None of that for me!
The pancakes turned out extra awesome because of wonderful, HTCLYG-esque tricks, like warming the egg and milk to room temperature, and beating them together before adding the melted butter. (The only time I prefer to use the microwave). The butter, by the way, was half organic ghee that I made, because I'm living with barbarians who buy salted butter. What the hell? So I tried to cut the salt by mixing it with delicious, salt-free ghee, which was also used in the skillet.

Ahh, the skillet. I could wax poetic about it for ages and ages, but that would get repetitive and probably a little creepy. So here's the cliffs-notes version: Baby Skillet (yes I named it) is a size 3 cast-iron skillet, manufactured by Griswold sometime between 1930 and 1950. I bought it for $10 at an antiques mall in Geneva, and I think it might be the best $10 I have ever spent. Baby Skillet requires very little lubricant, and almost no cleanup because nothing sticks to it. Nothing.

So: I mixed up the batter, let it sit while I heated the ghee in Baby Skillet and washed some dishes, feeling very productive and responsible. Right before pouring the pancakes I whisked the batter again for more rising awesomeness. (Have I mentioned that I love aluminum-free baking powder? I love it. A lot.) Slightly less than a quarter cup makes the perfect sized pancake for Baby Skillet, with just enough room to flip them with ease.

And Oh. They were gorgeous. The very first pancake had that pale, fried, first pancake look to it because it had absorbed all the excess ghee in the pan, and that one I broke my fast with after my morning prayer, and it was quite good, all saturated with pure butterfat goodness. NOM. The rest of the pancakes were normal, and by normal I mean perfectly uniform, even golden brown on top with smooth circular edges and they were all pretty much the same size. And I stacked them up neatly on the plate and it was....You could illustrate a children's book with these pancakes, that's how pristine they were. They are what bisquick pancakes dream to be, when they cry themselves to sleep at night. As for the taste: not too dry, dense but not throat-chokingly so (as pancakes can be, you know), nice rise but they didn't look like biscuits on crack or anything. I added vanilla extract and cinnamon to the batter, and mmmmmmmm were they tasty. very nice subtle flavor that complemented butter and syrup nicely. A bit too big to be silver dollar pancakes, but...wow. I'm using this recipe again.

By the time I made enough for Girlfriend (who had to get up even earlier than me, poor thing) and about half for me, the pan was getting a little dry again, but that's after about nine pancakes. I added a smidgen of bacon fat (aka "THE GOOD STUFF") and made a couple more: one for me and one for the ancestors, who got their own plate and a candle at the table while I ate. I adore ghee for its amazing cooking power and because it's vegetarian and I can fry things for Girlfriend now, but nothing, nothing, not even perfect old-fashioned pancakes cooked in ghee in a cast-iron skillet can compare to the taste of perfect old-fashioned pancakes cooked in a cast-iron skillet with bacon fat.
It was like I was transported into a magical sepia-toned world of From Scratch, with old-timey fiddle music and Auld Lang Syne and fresh-churned butter and pie crusts and rainbows and everything. The only thing that could have made it better was actual bacon. Another day!

After breakfast I cleaned up and started a money-drawing job-getting spell, having done like days of research on Lucky Mojo's pages. My foray into hoodoo begins! I like the intuitive nature of correspondences, the detailed process of setting lights. I found I was able to focus my intention really well. I'll keep it going and we'll see how it turns out. I have a good feeling about this. :)

And now, a freaking nap. I got like three hours of sleep.